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Featured in Development

Peter Alvaro talks about the reasons one should engage in language design and why many of us would (or should) do something so perverse as to design a language that no one will ever use. He shares some of the extreme and sometimes obnoxious opinions that guided his design process.

Featured in AI, ML & Data Engineering

Today on The InfoQ Podcast, Wes talks with Katharine Jarmul about privacy and fairness in machine learning algorithms. Jarul discusses what’s meant by Ethical Machine Learning and some things to consider when working towards achieving fairness. Jarmul is the co-founder at KIProtect a machine learning security and privacy firm based in Germany and is one of the three keynote speakers at QCon.ai.

Featured in Culture & Methods

Organizations struggle to scale their agility. While every organization is different, common patterns explain the major challenges that most organizations face: organizational design, trying to copy others, “one-size-fits-all” scaling, scaling in siloes, and neglecting engineering practices. This article explains why, what to do about it, and how the three leading scaling frameworks compare.

LocalDB: A Lightweight SQL Express for Developers

As part of SQL Denali CTP3, Microsoft has included a new version of SQL Express called Local Database Runtime (LocalDB). It offers many of the same features as SQL Express, but installs faster, has fewer prerequisites, and doesn’t require management of a database instance.

LocalDB is meant to be an easier way for developers to get a SQL Express database up and running with minimal configuration or management, but it can also be used in production if it suits the needs of an application. Because it opens as a file with exclusive use, LocalDB is not appropriate for server-based or multi-user environments.

LocalDB fully supports T-SQL, and uses the same client-side providers as other versions of SQL Server (ADO.NET, ODBC, etc). It runs in-process, rather than as a service. When an application connects to LocalDB, the provider checks to see if it’s already running, and if not, will start it up and connect. The connection closes automatically after a few minutes of inactivity.

The database supports AttachDbFileName, so the connection to LocalDB is straightforward:

Microsoft states that they intend to provide a LocalDB download option in the future. For now, developers can demo it by downloading the SQL Denali Express CTP3 and selecting the LocalDB option during installation.